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Bush Assures Italy on U.S. Troop Cuts

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Times Staff Writers

President Bush, indicating he is prepared to offer new arms control proposals at the NATO summit Monday, assured Italian leaders Saturday that he will not unilaterally reduce U.S. forces in Europe without consulting with U.S. allies.

Later, in a rare Saturday evening audience with Pope John Paul II, Bush vowed that “progress must continue” toward “realizing the biblical injunction to turn our swords into plowshares.”

John Paul, for his part, praised Bush for being “deeply committed” to “the efforts being made to liberate the youth of America from the destructive forces of drug abuse and to alleviate poverty at home and abroad.”

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The Pope declared, however, that those problems “are only the symptoms of a deeper moral crisis” throughout the world. “Truly the hour of international interdependence has struck,” he said. “What is at stake is the common good of humanity.”

At the end of the day, his second in a four-nation European tour, Bush toasted Italian-American friendship and the contributions of Italian-Americans to the United States at a dinner hosted by Prime Minister Ciriaco De Mita. Bush was loudly applauded when he announced that he will end the current requirement that Italians visiting the United States obtain visas.

Currently, only residents of Canada, Britain and Japan are exempt from visa requirements.

In his meetings with Italian leaders, Bush told De Mita that the latest Soviet proposal to reduce its forces in Europe had provided openings for the allies to discuss new arms reduction proposals of their own when they meet at the 40th annual North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit in Brussels on Monday.

Focus on Poland

Bush also discussed the situation in Eastern Europe, particularly Poland, with Italian President Francesco Cossiga, who recently visited that country, and with the Pope, who was archbishop of Krakow before becoming pontiff.

The recent accord between Poland’s Communist leaders and the Solidarity-led opposition “is a tribute to the spirit of the Polish people as well as to the determination of the Polish church and, indeed, the Holy See,” Bush told the Pope.

After meeting with the pontiff, Bush, accompanied by his wife, Barbara, top aides and Vatican officials, visited 120 American seminarians studying at the Vatican. The students broke into applause when Bush entered the room and joined in a chorus of “God Bless America” after the President concluded his brief remarks.

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“What a neat welcome,” Bush said.

Today, Bush will tour an American military cemetery near the site of the World War II Anzio beachhead. He will then depart for Brussels to prepare for the opening of the NATO summit.

At the NATO meetings, Bush is expected to put forward a number of proposals, including one that would reduce NATO’s troop levels in Europe and another that would ease trade sanctions that the United States and its allies imposed against the Eastern Bloc.

“The President clearly will be discussing a number of ideas--many of them have not been presented before--related to the conventional arms talks and related to this latest offer by the Soviet Union,” White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater said as he briefed reporters on the closed-door meetings.

The trade sanctions bar exports to Soviet Bloc countries of any item on a lengthy list of products, ranging from computer software to oil pipelines, that could be converted to military use.

Before the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the United States and its allies reviewed such exports on a case-by-case basis. But in 1980, the U.S. announced a policy of “no exceptions,” under which any such exports would be blocked.

No Unilateral Action

Fitzwater stressed that Bush told the Italians--De Mita, Cossiga and former Premier Bettino Craxi--that Washington will not take any unilateral action but will approach both troop reductions and the trade issue “within the framework of the consultations in Brussels.”

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But European nations have long chafed under the no-exceptions trade rule and would likely welcome a move by Washington to loosen it.

The impetus for the new moves, Fitzwater said, is the latest Soviet arms control proposal, made May 23 at the Vienna arms talks, which called for massive reductions in conventional forces. That proposal “goes a long way toward accepting some of the concepts” of earlier NATO proposals, Fitzwater said.

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